


The Wolf That's Yet to Howl

by Princessfbi



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Awful People, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Evan "Buck" Buckley & Henrietta "Hen" Wilson Friendship, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Toxic Work Environment, Insecure Evan "Buck" Buckley, Near Death Experiences, Post-Episode 1x02 Let Go, Probie Evan "Buck" Buckley, Protective Team, Team as Family, Wolf Pack Mentality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28745064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princessfbi/pseuds/Princessfbi
Summary: “If one of you assholes takes another step, I’m pushing this kid over the edge. Do you understand?”Wide, terrified blue eyes dropped to stare at the speeding congested freeway below before leveling back up towards the gun in his face.Set during Season One and Buck's first real scare on the job.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 281





	The Wolf That's Yet to Howl

Hen once heard that the sound of a wolf’s howl could travel up to ten miles away. The low guttural song that used the wind to carry it to connect the harmonies of nearby family members. A song that was distinct and unique down to the very tone. It was sung for a variety of reasons; using the long arching sound to communicate as clear as words. Things like trying to find a friend, alerting a pack of incoming danger, warning a stranger to stay away, or a call to protect their young. Regardless of the reason the howl served one basic purpose: a cry for validation that the wolf is never truly alone.

A declaration of solidarity.

They all howled at one point in their own way. In their line of work, it was inevitable. The things that snap and snarl and eat you up inside until you break a little always manage to find you at some point. And the first one is always the hardest. She just wished Buck’s first time hadn’t been so traumatic.

Buck was young and impulsive and somehow both incredibly stupid and exceptionally brilliant. It’d been fondness at first sight for her that day he’d strolled into the loft with a flimsy swagger that did nothing to hide the bashful nerves as he looked for Captain Nash. Chim had told her a paramedic who had mentored him once said that you didn’t name a puppy until you knew it was going to survive and warned her to keep her distance.

But Buck had shown up with his own name, big blue eyes, and a bow. Buck, like he often did with most things, ignored that rule and spent the first couple months on the job bounding up and down the stairs chasing after the tennis ball of life with every ring of the alarm.

And if Buck was a puppy with his own name, then they were a pack of lone wolves with their tails curled in.

When Gerrard had been forced to resign, an easiness had taken over the house. But it had been an easiness that came with a price. They had deep bruises left by that wretched, old stain of a man. Even Sal and Tommy looked like they’d ached for weeks after he’d left and they’d been as close to being favorites as anyone could get with Gerrard.

Over time, they healed. Over time, Bobby came in and forced them into the sunshine and opened the windows to air out of the fumes.

But it wasn’t until Buck came along that they saw any light again. He had this effortless disposition that was simultaneously irritating and infectious all in one. Buck was an untainted goodness that brought in new life to their sad, wounded den. He nipped at them until they came out of hiding and rolled around until they forgot the hurt they’d been trying to nurse for too long. And they had all latched onto him in their own way. Bobby tried not to show it but she’d been watching him for a while and knew he’d always had one eye on the team and the other eye specifically on Buck; ready to lift him back onto his feet if he wobbled. And he did wobble. Losing that kid on the rollercoaster had been rough on Buck. The first ones always were. But they’d all come together to help nudge Buck back into the light and soon he was pulling on their tails and living up to that resemblance to a puppy amongst some older, jaded wolves again.

By now, Hen would’ve laughed at how ridiculous the whole metaphor had gotten but she couldn’t help but focus on the comparison as they circled around the scene with a snarl hidden deep behind their professionalism. Because if there’s one thing that’s known about wolves, it’s that if you hurt the pup, you invite fury of the pack. And that was exactly what they looked like. A pack of wolves circling the one stupid enough to hurt their young.

Hen really wished these toxic angsty white boys would learn to stop taking their misery out on everyone else.

Really.

At the best of times, all they ended up doing was ruin someone else’s day. At the worst of times, well… she wasn’t looking at the worst but it was a close enough thing.

It’d been a messy but harmless accident where a minivan had tried to cut off a sedan and ended up clipping the driver side and sending the small car into a pick-up truck that had crushed the other side. The poor driver, a young woman who Hen was pretty sure was a personal assistant to someone Chim would know from his weird movies, was more preoccupied with trying to navigate her boss’s calendar than to freak out about the fact that her car had essentially been crushed around her. By some miracle, she’d been fine other than a few cuts from the glass of her window shield. Fine but stuck and the wreckage had been messy enough to block off the entrance to the overpass all the way back to Clairmont.

They were pretty much done, clearing up what they could of the scene and filling out paperwork with all parties involved.

Buck had been planted on the side by Bobby with a clipboard in hand as he documented everything with a careful eye and a pout that could rival her seven-year-old. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to put together how much Buck loved the job. Loved it even down to the nitty gritty tedious parts. But even Buck would rather move pieces of plastic and steel to the side of the road than do paperwork.

The rolling clouds promised an overdue rain storm. Hen could taste it on her tongue and smell it in the gusto of wind every so often. The first of the season and she had hoped they could make it back to the station for a meal before the downpour began.

The man shouldn’t have even been able to get onto the scene. Someone should’ve directed him to stay in his car. But somehow, he stalked through the mess and the mayhem, practically foaming at the mouth and heaving like he'd run a mile. He lifted his hand in the air and fired off a shot from his handgun. The crack of the gunfire sent people scrambling for cover. All of the muscles in Hen’s neck tightened as she ducked, the old scar on her back stretching and pulsing with a set aside memory she tried not to talk about, and the hair on her arm standing on end as _danger danger danger danger_ crackled in the air like electricity.

People were screaming and officers were shouting for back up as they pulled out their guns to aim at the threat in the middle of their accident scene.

Almost immediately, panic flashed across the man’s expression like his soul returned to his body to feel the rush of horror at his meltdown. And with panic came the spooked animal instincts.

He spotted their youngest and lunged for him like a desperate mountain lion and Buck, still too dazed by the ringing echoing report of the gun fire, was too slow to move. The man grabbed the front of Buck’s shirt with a snarl and pushed him until the small of his back pressed into the guard rail. Buck’s feet went out from under him for a second and Hen’s heart slammed high into her throat and threatened to choke her. But Buck rocked back onto his toes and scrambled to hold onto the man’s wrist as he teetered again. A yelp slipped past his lips as Buck found himself caught between the feeling of falling and being frozen in place as the gun was leveled in front of his face.

“Buck!”

They all were shouting his name as the very real jolting horror of Buck almost falling over spurred them into action but Bobby’s call was the loudest. Buck’s head jerked at the sound of his name, hyperventilating, but the man pushed him a little more and Buck’s gaze latched onto him again.

“If one of you assholes takes another step, I’m pushing this kid over the edge. Do you understand?”

Wide, terrified blue eyes dropped to stare at the speeding congested freeway below before leveling back up towards the gun in his face. Buck paled and clung on to the man’s wrist until his knuckles turned white.

“Sir,” Bobby said, biting out the calm like it was all he could do to keep from rushing him. “My name’s Captain Nash. Please let my man go. We can talk---”

“I said _get back_!” The man shouted as John and Jensen circled up beside him with Chim and Hen coming up on the other side.

The man was panicking beneath all the savage snarling, overwhelmed and hysterical, but Hen didn’t care. His arm was already shaking with the added weight of balancing the precarious equilibrium of Buck’s body. Buck’s back was bowed into a painful arch and it looked like all of his weight was trapped on his toes. All it would take was one push and Buck would lose his balance and fall. He couldn’t sustain the position for long and even if he could, Buck’s back was sure to cramp up any minute. They wouldn’t even have time to make it down to the freeway let alone time to stop traffic and blow up the air bag. The sharp wind kicked up a notch and swirled at their feet and Buck’s hair was curling with sweat as he grimaced.

“Do you realize,” the man said with a sneer at Bobby. “That in the time it has taken you to sweep the goddamn concrete, keeping us all trapped in our cars like rats, my entire world has fallen apart?”

“Sir---”

But Bobby’s reasoning was cut off again as the man pushed the gun against Buck’s throat.

“ _I want someone to get my wife on the phone right now!”_

An aborted mewl slipped out as Buck’s adam’s apple bobbed against the press of the barrel. Buck’s gaze cut to Hen and Chim, stunning Hen when she saw the blush of _embarrassment,_ of all things, beneath the body consuming fear. Chim lifted a calming hand beside her, coaching Buck to take a deep breath, and trying to pass off a pseudo calm that none of them believed in but had perfected a long time ago; wearing it like a borrowed but familiar coat.

The man swung his gaze around to Chim and Hen and jostled Buck even more with a twist of his fist in the fabric of Buck’s uniform. Buck’s eyes slammed shut as he flinched at the press of the gun moved higher up on his throat.

“Get back!” The man spat at them. “Get back or I swear to God---”

He swung his gaze around and screeched out a curse at John and Jensen who had used the brief distraction to move in closer.

“Get back! You've ruined everything!” The words ripped out of the man in an animalistic snarl that shot off like a starter pistol into a fast-paced violent series of events

“Put down the gun!”

“Someone get a field sergeant down here right now!”

“Everyone get back!”

“Get her on the phone right now!” The man screamed, his face turning purple as his hysteria cranked up a notch in the mixture of the chaos erupting around them. “Get her on the phone and tell her she made a mistake! Tell her to take me back! _I will kill this kid if I don't hear from her right now!_ ”

The man threw his head back and wailed. He was spiraling _fast_ and pushing all his weight into the hold he had on Buck. Buck's feet weren’t even on the ground anymore with his weight pushed into his hips bent over the edge and his back was bowed at an impossible stretch. The man was shaking as if he was about to burst apart at the seams.

But it was the choked whimper from Buck’s lips that sent them into action.

Something hot coiled at the base of Hen's spine as determination blanketed all of them at once. They moved in a tangle of limbs but they moved as one in the only way a group of people who have worked hard and fast in the worst places together could. The man jerked at the rush and swung his gun towards Jensen but Bobby grabbed his arm and pushed it skyward. The crack of the bullet rang in Hen’s ears but even that wasn’t loud enough over the thundering pulse of her heart rate roaring inside of her. Because in that moment, when the choke of the barrel against his throat was gone, Buck didn’t even get a chance to breathe before the man was pushing back against Bobby and using Buck as leverage for his momentum.

Buck’s eyes locked onto hers as he fell backwards, slipping out of Jensen's grasp, and disappearing head first over the guard rail.

“Buck!”

Hen didn’t know who screamed his name. It could’ve been any of them or it could’ve been all of them.

Flashes of possibilities dashed across Hen’s brain like fists against her skull. Buck falling, hand outreached and a scream caught on his lips. Buck crashing into the ground with a sickening crunch that no one could ever walk away from. Buck bouncing off a speeding car and crumbling lifeless onto the ground. The light from their recovering fire house would be gone for forever. Buck wouldn’t have even been on the job for a year. She couldn’t breathe. It was almost enough to stun her into stillness.

Almost.

But she didn’t and neither did the rest of the team.

Everything slowed into a speed of a drawn-out sluggish screeching horror show as the realization that Buck was falling crashed over them and their instincts took over.

John launched himself over the edge and grabbed Buck’s belt and nearly dropped him but Chim was there just as fast and was half over the guard rail himself as he latched his arms around Buck’s leg. The trio crashed into the crumbling cement of the overpass in a sickening scrubbing sound of flesh being torn against concrete. Buck wheezed out what sounded like all the air that had been in his chest as his descent jerked to a sudden stop. Hen grabbed onto Chim and Jensen onto John to keep them from following over. Bobby was with them in a flash--- whether he’d passed off the man to the officers or what, Hen didn’t know--- and was leaning over to secure his arms around Buck’s waist.

“Hold on, Buckaroo!” Chim was saying to distract Buck from the fact that he was dangling almost twenty feet in the air with only their combined strength to keep him from plummeting head first into the speeding traffic below.

“Grab my hand!”

“Just hold on, Buck!”

“We got you, Buck!”

A strangled, wordless sound that croaked out of Buck was the only reply they could get. They’d caught Buck by the skin of their teeth and they all knew it. Hen felt someone grabbing onto the back of her belt and police officers were leaning over to help draw Buck back up and over the edge to collapse on the ground in a heap of tangled limbs and exhausted gulping of air.

It took them a second to find the stunning clarity that they were all on solid ground again but Hen was sure the lurched off kilter feeling of her stomach was going to stick with her for a while.

“Oh, thank God!” Bobby gasped as he pulled Buck by the scruff of his neck into his chest and scanned the rest of them with a wide, amazed gaze for anyone else in jeopardy.

Buck went willingly, shuddering until his whole body erupted into a rippling quaking as his adrenaline crashed.

The man from before screeched again and Buck flinched so violently that they all felt it deep down to their very cores. They collapsed on top of him, shielding Buck with their bodies and running their hands wherever they could reach, in search of any kind of wound they had missed.

“You’re okay.” They all murmured over and over again whether to reassure Buck or themselves. “You’re okay.”

Buck opened his mouth to speak but the word got lost in a huffed sound that none of them could decipher.

“Is everyone okay over here?” Athena’s brow arched high on her forehead as she took in the panting, sweating pile of firefighters on the ground all trying to get their heart rates down to a reasonable level.

She was given a series of mumbled, gasped affirmatives and Hen tried to swallow past the dryness of her throat to nod.

* * *

Buck hadn’t said a word and it’d started to worry all of them. Other than a pretty nasty case of road rash on his arm where he’d tried to catch himself and the slight tentative steps he took when he walked which Hen suspected was from a very tight back and the massive bruise on his side, he was fine. Physically, at least. The not speaking part was really starting to freak them out though.

Buck’s new muteness triggered the humming panic underneath all their skin. But a different kind of panic from the one on the overpass. No, this one was more like a reminder. The silence was like a memory that none of them realized they’d forgotten until it was slapping them in the face. A reminder of the time when the house was dark and they were together but separate as the echoing growl of Gerrard’s time bounced from rafter to rafter and sent them scurrying to keep their heads down and their hackles raised.

It was as if they were clinging to each other by their fingertips the same time they’d been clinging to Buck to keep him from falling.

Buck wouldn’t meet anyone’s gaze. He wouldn’t rise to their baited nipping or their gentle prodding. He was curling his arms around him with his shoulders hitched all the way up to his ears, trying to appear as small as possible like he was hoping to disappear. The only sort of response they got from him was when Bobby had suggested Buck ride in the ambulance to get checked out.

“I’m fine, Cap,” Buck said, his voice low and wounded but trying so hard to remain neutral.

That had been the last thing Buck had said to any of them. He’d disappeared into the showers the moment they’d gotten back to the fire house and had stayed in there long enough for Chim to ultimately decide to check in on him to make sure he hadn’t collapsed.

All eyes swung onto Chim as he climbed the stairs to the loft with a shake of his head.

“He’s… Well, he’s not _fine_ but he’s fine.”

Bobby nodded and turned back to the food he was throwing together for their dinner. The sun had long since disappeared in the sky, bringing the first edges of the storm so that the ceiling was filled with a pitter patter white noise that only seemed to heighten the silence.

The shadows, the ones they had thought had disappeared, crept back into every corner and took residence over them. But no one seemed to know what to do. They’d become so reliant on their exasperation that they hadn’t realized how much Buck had started to become the sun in their driftless orbits.

But what Hen couldn’t understand was why. Buck had gotten comfortable with them quickly. Comfortable enough to steal food from their plates and jump in to laugh in on their jokes and unabashedly unashamed to share every TMI detail about his latest conquest (though, that had died down after he started taking calls from the 911 operator). He kept his history pretty tight lipped but they all did. Buck shared in their victories and he shared in their defeats. It didn’t make sense that he wouldn’t want to share in their fear too unless…

Hen thought of that embarrassed flush that had crawled up his face. 

She blew out a curse and made her way down to the locker room.

Hen bit back a grimace as she caught sight of the black and blue along Buck’s side where he’d crashed into cement, the skin puffy and red along the edges from the impact. But Chim would’ve seen it in the shower and checked for broken ribs so she swallowed back the worry and waited for Buck to finish pulling his LAFD t-shirt over his head. 

She didn’t know if Buck heard her approaching or he was just becoming better attuned with sensing the rest of them, but he stilled anyway. He froze in place with a doe eyed gaze that she wanted to shake out of his facial repertoire because he just looked so goddamn _surprised._ Teeth latched onto the side of his lip and Buck ducked his head down to his chest as that same embarrassed flush colored up his throat into his cheeks.

“You okay, Buckaroo?” Hen asked, tilting her head as she leaned against the lockers.

Buck shrugged. “I’m fine.”

Buck dropped down onto the bench and fiddled with the laces of his boots. Hen sat down on the bench opposite of him, struck by the similarities of their positions from only a month earlier when Buck had surprised her by admitting that his firing was his own fault. She'd underestimated him then and she'd vowed never to do that again.

Buck was chewing on the side of his lip so hard that Hen was sure that the skin was probably raw and coppery by now. When he couldn’t occupy his hands with his laces, Buck slid them onto his thighs and pressed deep into the muscle with his fingertips. He slid his hands up and down like it was the only self-soothing he seemed to know. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Buck as still as he had been on that overpass and now it was like the energy was oozing its way out whether he liked it or not.

See, that was something they don’t prepare you for at the academy. You run drill after drill _after drill_ until you could run them in your sleep. You force muscle memory to form along with real muscles as well. You cram in every bit of information in a series of text books until the only space left in your brain is the reminder to eat and sleep. They even prepare you for life that is there one second and gone with another. Prepping their candidates with the grave reality that most of the time when they are doing CPR it’s usually too late by then. But they don’t prepare you for the murky in between. They don’t prepare you for the selfish people who feel vindicated on taking out justice with their own gavel and banging at people because it made them feel better. 

And Hen understood. It was Buck’s first real scare. The first glimpse at just how rotten and terrible the world could be. Something told her that Buck wasn’t unfamiliar with the painful welts left by people lashing out. But it was an entirely different thing to face a lash when offering up your own hand to help. That the uniform had a kryptonite that could be exploited so easily. That under the sacredness of their duty, they were just flesh and blood and sometimes that’s all people could see.

He was a pup surrounded by lone wolves and afraid that his howl would be met with silence so he stuffed it inside where he thought no one could see it. She didn’t know who taught him that but she’d do her best to try and help him unlearn it.

“I---” Buck started, blinking furiously as a lone tear tracked down the side of his face.

He sniffed and shoved a fist against his face to brush it away.

“I’m not fired, right?” He asked, sounding so unsure that it almost broke Hen in two.

“ _No!_ ” Hen launched herself across the way to straddle the bench next to him and actually shook him a little. “Of course, you aren’t!”

“Bobby’s not…” Buck started and swallowed with a shake of his head. “Bobby’s not mad?”

“Did you smack your face into that overpass and knock out your common sense?” 

The humiliated flush was reaching all the way to the tips of Buck’s ears. Hen couldn’t even begin to wrap her head around the fact that he for one second thought that was even remotely true but now that she could see him, unguarded and raw, the insecurity was as plain as day.

“Buck,” Hen said, leveling Buck with a gentle glare. “No one is mad. Is that what’s been bothering you?” 

Buck dropped his gaze down to hands as he twisted his fingers together in his lap.

“I messed up---”

“You got ambushed.”

Something hard and nearly indecipherable flashed across Buck's face as he looked up at her. Something a little desperate and accepting and hurt with too many layers for her to navigate through with the exhaustion of the day dragging at her heels. 

“Yeah, but it was me. Not one of you guys," he said, critical and deprecating and dimmed. 

She missed that light; the one that sparkled even when he was being annoying because he was just so happy to be there. She missed the gleaming rays of the Buck she knew who soaked up everything he could and made stupid jokes to irritate Chimney and was just so happy to be a part of something _bigger._

Buck didn't have to experiencing the suffocating shadows the rest of them had to face when they first started working. Buck had been ready by the 'Go' in 'Good Morning'. And as much as Hen wanted to be like a wolf and keep Buck trapped away in the den as she covered the opening with her body to protect him from the cruelty of the job, she had to let him experience the inevitability that came with their work. Eventually wolf puppies had to experience the world around them. Their job was to run into traumatic situations and some of that trauma smeared onto their turnout coats. It was inescapable. 

“It would’ve happened to any one of us.” Hen insisted and grabbed his hand when he tried to pull away. “Buck, look. The people are the best part and the worst part of this job. And sometimes, they would rather take out their frustrations on you than thank you simply because you’re the closest available person.”

She hated how damn lost he looked. Hated that she couldn't prevent it. But she could lead him out a little. 

“It has happened to all of us. Me, Chim, even Bobby. You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

Another tear leaked out and this time Buck didn't stop it. Hen let it cascade down his cheek and met it at his jaw to brush it away with her thumb. Buck's face turned red for a whole different reason as the stress and the fear and the whole mess of emotions that had latched onto him on that bridge the moment some idiot threatened to push him off decided to make their debut all at once. It was a valiant effort but even Buck couldn't keep it all inside. Buck curled tighter inward, torn between wanting to hide out of habit and wanting to accept the comfort she was readily offering.

Buck's breath hitched high in his throat. Hen bent down and wrapped her arms around him, rubbing at his back and leaning her head against his. 

“Let us in, Buckaroo.”

And that was all Buck needed to hear before he let out a sob and howled. 


End file.
